The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, on the eve of the upfront selling season, has released a special report underscoring the breadth of the national cable networks’ collective size versus the “five screens” advertisers and agency customers are looking toward for their ad buys.
Created at the request of a number U.S. media agencies, the "Cable Nation: Video Advertising Update," using Nielsen, comScore and Trendrr data, aims to furnish ad budget allocators with statistics that quantify the role that cable plays in the daily lives of Americans.
Among the findings: Cable remains the dominant force in ad-supported television, garnering 92% and 75% of total-day and primetime ratings, respectively, against Madison Avenue’s coveted 18-to-49 demo.
Moreover, the two screens of cable TV, plus Internet, hold a significant lead over four portals and Facebook with 85 hours per month. That compares with 34 hours spent with broadcast fare, and 24 hours with AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Facebook.
Relative to social media activity, cable programming is generating the buzz. Cable fare accounts for 71% of the social media driven by the top 20 most socially active TV programs, while also holding an eight-to-one activity-per-thousand social advantage over broadcast across the top 20 socially active TV series.
Broadcast represented 27% of the social activity of the top 20 shows, with pay cable accounting for the remaining 2%. Basic-cable shows accounted for 67% of the social media reflecting positive sentiment.
“While there has been a perception that cable brands were well-followed on the Internet, mobile and social media, our ability to quantify their collective size per screen and on combined screens has been a real eye-opener among our customers,” said CAB CEO and president Sean Cunningham in a statement. “It’s clear cable owns the primary media relationship with the U.S. consumer by a wide margin.”
